More ways that we can combat poverty here

In my Jan. 17 column, I shared five suggestions for changing the affects of poverty on our country. This week, I have added to the list below:

1. Use common sense to make rules. During the first polar vortex, a couple were profiled on the national news sleeping in a tent in 25-below-zero weather in Minnesota. They would not go to a shelter because they could not stay together. In scenarios like this, reason must prevail — let’s keep some fellow humans alive, and try to keep them together. Someone else apparently felt similarly and put the couple in an emergency stay in a motel.

This week, the city of Atlanta was the focus of national attention as thousands of students in schools and tens of thousands of motorists were stranded during a southern snowstorm. The city was under a winter storm warning, but schools were still open. Common sense did not prevail, and this resulted in unsafe and potentially dangerous conditions. Something is very wrong with a system that results in this kind of chaos.

My point is if we allow the focus and goal of our efforts to remain in front of us, they can allow us to make decisions that will benefit the people that we want to help, in contrast to decisions that benefit systems versus the people affected by them.

2. Stop the blame game. During my years in the poverty war, I have often had to respond to questions of why someone who came to the food pantry drove up in a car that actually worked? Or why did someone on the WIC program have a gold chain around her neck? My answer usually was, I didn’t know, but my intent was to assist them in breaking the cycle of poverty so their offspring would not need our services. Why do we need the poor to look poor, act and talk poor? That is an endless game that will never end because each of us has our own vision of what poor means. Shift the focus to what can be done to change the dynamics of this family’s experience so that they can move above poverty. Could it be that by always blaming the poor and disenfranchised that we will never look at other failures and misplaced policies?

3. A shift in local dynamics. I have always been intrigued by our own local divide between north and south Springfield and the accompanying stereotypes. Is it possible that we can be intentional in this community to create more investment in the areas of our city and region that have weaker economic indicators? What are the efforts to locate jobs, retail, industry and additional community services to benefit residents and to spur additional economic development in those areas? This is the vision that I would hope is true for our city — strong neighborhoods, from north to south, east to west and unlimited potential.

4. Resolve, with some care and concern and a clear sense of mission, that as a nation we are greater than this. Maybe a tribute to the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. will call us to do more than walk and talk, but to tell our leaders and our neighbors that we believe it is possible that this great land of ours can extend to all the possibilities and rewards of a job that supports families.

I don’t want to see poverty overcome someday — but today. Will you help?

Lyle Foster is part of the Commercial Street Merchants Association and active in several local organizations.